Ex-Apollo Chief to Direct NASA Review : Study to Focus on Management; Agency Warned on Funding

NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher, responding to continued criticism of the embattled U.S. space program, announced Tuesday that the retired Air Force general who directed the Apollo program that landed men on the moon will undertake a six- to eight-month study of space agency management.

In his first full day on the job, the new NASA chief went to Capitol Hill to testify on the space budget and immediately encountered a stern warning that Congress might hold up funds for new programs if the space agency’s house is not put in order.

‘Out of Kilter’

Telling Fletcher that “something is out of kilter,” Chairman Edward P. Boland (D-Mass.) of the House Appropriations subcommittee on independent agencies warned: “Until we feel that NASA’s management and NASA’s policies are in order, until we feel that you have turned this agency around, until that happens, this subcommittee can withhold funds for new programs.”

Fletcher acknowledged that there are “some things that must be fixed,” but he said press reporting since the Jan. 28 Challenger disaster has given the impression that “NASA is and always has been a poorly managed agency (and) that simply isn’t true.”

Sam Phillips, 65, will head a group of experts who will study management structure and the relations between the Washington headquarters and the powerful field centers that lead spaceflight hardware design and manage flight operations.

At the same time that Fletcher disclosed Phillips’ independent study of space agency management, Deputy Administrator William R. Graham said that he had ordered NASA’s inspector general to determine whether the agency was involved in the demotion of two engineers for Morton Thiokol Inc., who opposed the Challenger launching because of record cold temperatures the night before liftoff.

Denied NASA Contact

The two Thiokol rocket experts--Allan J. McDonald and Roger Boisjoly--earlier this month told the presidential commission investigating the accident that they have been placed in new jobs where they no longer have contact with officials of the space agency, reassignments that they believe amounted to demotions.

Graham said he had earlier received assurances from Thiokol, which makes the solid rocket boosters that have helped lift the shuttle into orbit, that its employees would be permitted to speak freely.

The disclosure of the shift of the Thiokol engineers upset Senate Democrats who circulated a letter demanding a NASA investigation even as Graham disclosed that he had instructed the inspector general to look into the episode.

Tuesday afternoon, the letter, signed by 28 Senate Democrats, was sent to Fletcher, saying they were “gravely disturbed” by McDonald and Boisjoly’s account of their reassignment.

“We cannot hope to have a complete understanding of the shuttle disaster if those with pertinent information can only expect retribution if they come forward,” the letter said. Before Boland’s subcommittee, Fletcher and other NASA officials were closely questioned about new evidence turned up by the presidential investigating commission that Marshall Space Flight Center had been bluntly warned nearly a year ago that the O-rings that seal the joints between segments of the space shuttle’s solid rocket booster might not work at temperatures below 50 degrees.

Letter From Engineer

In their investigation of the much debated launching, which took place after temperatures had fallen below freezing, commission investigators turned up a letter from Morton Thiokol engineer Brian G. Russell to James W. Thomas Jr., a NASA official, saying:

“Bench test data indicate that the O-ring resiliency (its capability to follow the metal) is a function of temperature and rate of case expansion . . . at 100 degrees F, the O-ring maintained contact. At 75 degrees F, the O-ring lost contact for 2.4 seconds. At 50 degrees F, the O-ring did not re-establish contact in 10 minutes at which time the test was terminated.

“The conclusion is that secondary sealing capability in the solid rocket motor field joint cannot be guaranteed.”

Investigators have concluded that the O-rings did not seat and seal a lower joint in the Challenger’s right solid rocket booster. Flame ate its way through the rocket casing beginning a series of events that destroyed the shuttle and took the lives of the seven crew members 73 seconds after liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.